Where science meets art
Issued: Fri, 06 May 2011 15:41:00 BST
Just one glance inside the Centre for Textile Conservation & Technical Art History, and the dual nature of the space is immediately apparent.
A fragment of tapestry, possibly two centuries old, sits on an immaculate lab bench, ready to be stitched and mounted. Nearby, a baby's bonnet, once lovingly knitted, nestles under a layer of protective gauze, awaiting cleaning. Close to hand are containers of purified water, microscopes, carefully measured cleansing solutions, and ovens that can be used to accelerate the ageing process of materials in order to predict the future damage facing particular textiles.
Frances Lennard, Senior Lecturer in Textile Conservation, is explaining how the centre, working in collaboration with partners such as Glasgow Museums, the National Trust for Scotland, the National Museum of Scotland and the University's own Hunterian Museum & Art Gallery, is training students to understand, interpret, display and preserve a diverse array of objects and artwork.
'The items that we work on are very valuable, as is any museum object,' she says. 'If something happens to it, then it cannot be replaced. That's why our centre's collection is fantastically useful: we have examples of everything. So if we're talking to our students about weave types, then we can find various kinds to show them. Or we can have stitching practicals using all sorts of different materials that are damaged. These are useful for the students to practise on before they start working on objects in Glasgow's museums.'
The centre, officially opened by the Princess Royal in February, brings together the conservation teaching work of the Textile Conservation Centre, which was formerly based in the University of Southampton, and the University of Glasgow's own world-leading expertise in technical art history. The result is an internationally significant research and education hub. As well as offering graduate degree programmes in technical art history, textile conservation and – beginning in 2011 – dress and textile history, it exists as a multidisciplinary centre for research in all of these areas. And, according to Professor Nick Pearce, head of the University's School of Culture & Creative Arts, the opportunities for research collaboration extend much further.
'There's potential for partnerships across many different subjects within the University's College of Arts,' he explains, 'but also we already have engagement with the sciences: with chemistry, with engineering and recently, with physics.'
What's more, nearly £100,000 of funding recently awarded by the Getty Foundation is enabling Glasgow's researchers to embark on new networking opportunities with other experts and institutions around the world, including representatives from the Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Netherlands' Van Gogh Museum and Royal Picture Gallery, London's V&A, the National Gallery of Denmark and the University of Highlands & Islands, Skye.
Ms Lennard explains further: 'The investment has allowed us to put together an advisory panel who can recommend topics for future research. We're going to hold five network meetings through the course of 2011 and 2012, each with a different theme, where people can talk about their ideas, both within the University and internationally.'
One theme will address issues of authenticity, for example, as an increasing number of conservation projects involve digitizing information and artefacts then the question arises: what should happen to the real thing? How should it be stored, and who should be given access to it? Another important subject area is the issue of how to best preserve and display the very different materials now used to create pieces of modern art, from videotape and photographs to plastics of various kinds.
'Modern art and 20th-century synthetic fibres coming into museums are quite a problem,' says Ms Lennard, 'because we know a lot more about our traditional materials: things like silk and wool and cotton. So a lot of research is going on in the museum field into dealing with modern materials generally but a lot more needs to be done.'
Of course, this is not to say that older materials will be overlooked. Ms Lennard has recently completed a three-year project funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council to look at methods of testing tapestries for damage, for example. This research, which she began while working at the Textile Conservation Centre's former home in Southampton, explored the possibility of using modern techniques usually used by engineers to monitor aircraft, in order to predict and protect tapestries from areas of potential strain.
It was the first time that techniques borrowed from engineering have been proved to be useful in this way and Ms Lennard is now hoping to build on this research and looking for potential collaborators in Glasgow. 'Bodies like the National Trust for Scotland are very interested in this research because they have hundreds of tapestries and each one can cost hundreds of thousands of pounds to conserve,' she explains.
'If we can tell how much risk a particular tapestry is under, then we can use that knowledge in order to prioritise treatments.'